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Monday, July 10, 2017

Brace for food price hikes thanks to Donald Trump's deportation force

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/26/1675441/-Brace-for-food-hikes-thanks-to-Donald-Trump-s-deportation-force
"It’s not like there weren’t warning signs. Here’s what happened when Georgia and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s home state of Alabama enacted anti-immigrant legislation: Just after taking office that winter, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a bill that, he vowed, would “crack down on the influx of illegal immigrants into our state.” Known in civil-liberties circles as Georgia’s racial-profiling law, House Bill 87 encouraged local police officers to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of violating any regulation, including traffic rules, and imposed harsh penalties on anyone caught “harboring an illegal alien.” The governor probably didn’t intend for his signature immigration law to cost his state’s farm sector loads of cash. But his timing couldn’t have been worse. A shortfall of 11,000 workers—representing about 85 percent of peak employment—caused $75 million in crop losses that spring alone, with a total hit to the state economy of $103.6 million that season, according to a study by the University of Georgia. Neighboring Alabama passed an even more draconian law later that year, spurring its immigrant farmworkers to exit en masse and costing the state up to 6 percent of its gross domestic product."